For Freshtovia!

I recently discovered the new Wendy's tabletop RPG.  It's called Feast of Legends.

Yes, that's Wendy's as in the hamburger restaurant.

I browsed through the pdf, and I must admit that it looks kind of awesome.  The art is great.  The skills and other technical stuff are clever and creative.  I'm not a tabletop gamer--I don't even own the necessary dice--but I sort of want to play this game.

Check it out for yourself:

https://www.feastoflegends.com/

And a big kudos to Wendy's for investing the time, money, and effort into this.  It's a really cool achievement.

Update

Had another migraine today.  I'm currently in the "hangover" stage, so I'm not back to normal yet, but I can somewhat function so long as I don't exert myself too much.

All I've had to eat was a bowl of cereal which I promptly vomited up later.  I'm currently drinking a Sprite in the hopes of putting a little sugar and calories into my body.

My head still hurts a little, though not too bad.  I took some pills about an hour ago when I was certain I was finished with the vomiting.

Naturally, I've been completely useless today.  No words written or edited or anything of that sort.  Maybe I can produce a little after I publish this blog post.

I will say this, though: the word count for book 4 is currently at 82,253.  That's a few thousand more than the first draft, so I'm making progress.  I've been incorporating my notes, so this part of the revision is more of the "fixing inconsistencies and plot holes and whatnot" than actually fleshing out what's already there.  That part comes next.  When I write a first draft, I tend to focus on action and dialog, and the result is kind of a choppy manuscript.  I have to go back later and add stuff to smooth it all out.  Once I'm done adding in my notes, then I'll proceed to the smoothing stage, and that should see the word count increase at a faster rate.

I've said before that my target was for a finished product of 100k-110k words, and I'm still on track for that.

Also, I just had an idea occur to me for how to work through an important plot point in later books, so I'm calling that a breakthrough.  Yay for me, right?  :D

Silver linings, folks.  Silver linings.

Climate comparisons

I sometimes like to look at the climate data on Wikipedia for various cities around the world.  One of the interesting things I've discovered is how much more rain Atlanta gets than the stereotypically rainy cities of Britain and Ireland.

Atlanta averages 49.71 inches of rain per year.  By comparison, London, England averages 23.68 inches per year.  Dublin, Ireland averages 29.84 inches per year.  And Glasgow, Scotland, the city sometimes called the rainiest in the U.K., gets 49.01 inches per year, just shy of Atlanta's average.

Of course, Atlanta also gets a lot more sunshine, so the city tends to dry out faster than the cities of northwest Europe.  Atlanta gets 2738.3 hours of sunshine per year.  By comparison, London gets 1632.6, Dublin gets 1447.3, and Glasgow gets 1265.

Fun fact: Atlanta isn't even the rainiest part of Georgia.  That award goes to Rabun County, an actual rain forest.  It averages over 70 inches of rain per year.

The King of Cool

I recently saw a modern recreation of the car chase from Bullitt.  It involves Chad McQueen, Steve McQueen's son, driving the classic green Mustang.  It's pretty cool.  Here it is:

And here's the original starring the the King of Cool himself:

In my opinion, it's the music that really makes this scene.  You get a slow-speed buildup before the actual chase.  Then the seat belt gets fastened, and that's when you know things are about to get serious, because no one wore seat belts back then.

Anyway, I think Fast N' Loud's recreation is a nice tribute to Steve McQueen and the movie.

Re-read is done

I've finished my re-read of Ruined Worlds, which means I've finished all the re-reads I needed to do in preparation for writing the second draft of book 4.  I fixed a few usage errors in the manuscript and made a couple of editorial changes.  Nothing major.  The file was remarkably clean, and I'm pleased with my ability to proofread my own work.  I've uploaded the corrected file to the various retailers, so it'll be live according to their timetables.

Now it's time to start the major surgery.  The second draft is where I add scenes, delete scenes, and shuffle scenes around.  My goal is to finish it by Thanksgiving.

Progress report

I'm nearly done with the re-read of Ruined Worlds.  I expect to start the second draft of book 4 this weekend.

I've got some soreness in my right pectoral muscle, and I don't know why.  All I did today was mow the leaves.  Nothing strenuous.  :/

I did a three-promotion "promo stack" back in early September.  The hoped-for tail didn't materialize.  I won't be doing any more promo stacks unless they're in conjunction with a Bookbub.

I still can't figure out what I want to do about audio.  There are several different options, but all have significant downsides.

There's been almost no rain for the past two months.  Temps are cooler now--daily highs are around eighty--but still, we could use a little rain.

I'm close to the age my great-grandfather was when he registered for the World War I draft.  He wasn't drafted, and that's no surprise.  After the age of forty, the body starts to fall apart.  I couldn't imagine joining the military today in my current physical condition.

I'm eager to finish book 4, but the busiest time of the year is approaching, so who knows how much progress I'll make.  If I can finish the second draft before Thanksgiving, then I'll call that a win.

ZZ Top is doing a 50-year anniversary tour.  Fifty years together as a band!  That's forever in rock years.  Congratulations to that little old band from Texas.

That's all for now.  Take care, folks.

First cool day

Today was the first day of the fall that actually felt like fall.  The high temps have been in the nineties for all of September and October.  Today's high in the low eighties felt almost chilly.  Just goes to show how the body adapts, I guess.

As of yesterday, there was at least one hummingbird still around.  I expect her to move on soon.  It's rare to have one stick around after October 15.  The males have been long gone; I haven't seen a male since early August.  Only the females have stuck around this long.  Kind of weird, but whatever.  Have fun in Mexico, my little feathered friends, and I'll see you again in the spring.

They say you can predict the severity of the coming winter by observing the plants and animals.  Trees produce more acorns in anticipation of colder winters, etc.  That sort of thing.  I don't know how much stock to put in that, but it's an interesting theory.

Broker wars

I logged into my TD Ameritrade account today and was surprised to see a banner announcement at the top of the page.  It said that $0.00 commissions were now a reality. 

I was skeptical. 

I clicked on the "more details" link, expecting to find a catch in the fine print.  I found no catch, though, other than the usual added fees for broker-assisted trades and option contracts.  It looks like it is what it appears to be: free online trades for stocks and ETFs.

I was curious as to what spurred this radical change, so I did some quick googling.  It turns out Charles Schwab made an identical change earlier this week.  TD Ameritrade simply matched their policy.

Here's an article about it:

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/3-major-brokerage-stocks-18-billion-wiped-out-fee-war-2019-10-1028574665

Basically, the two brokers--three, actually, now that E*Trade joined in, too--seem to be playing a game of high-stakes chicken.  I suppose one of them will flinch when it can't afford to keep the lights on any longer.

I don't know how this will end, but I'll enjoy the free trades in the meantime.  I'm mostly an investor, not a trader, so I only average a handful of trades every year, but this change still amounts to a few extra bucks in my pocket.  Thanks, TD Ameritrade.  :)

Corrected book 2

I've finished my re-read of Mind Games and have now uploaded the corrected file to the various retailers.  There weren't any typos, and there were only a few usage errors, so the file was already pretty clean.  Anyway, it's better now.

Next task: re-read book 3 and take notes.  Once that's done, I should have all the notes I need to begin the second draft of book 4, which I'm frankly kind of anxious to get to.

In related news, the online validator I've been using to validate epubs is no longer working.  I've found another site, though, so hopefully it will prove to be just as good.